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Friday, July 12, 2013

Used Book p0rn - Science Fiction July 2013

Another trip to the used book shop against which I judge all used book shops, The Book Trader in Colonia, NJ. As I've said in other posts of this nature, I've been going to this shop for a couple of decades now and every time I go I find more books than I can take home. It isn't the biggest shop, but they haven't disappointed in terms of walking out with a stack of books. I walked in with a bunch of books I either read and thought 'meh' or books I know I'd never read received as review copies.

The photo above shows the books that left the store with me. Some more information:

Eric Brown - I've read three books by him, thoroughly enjoyed all three. In fact, I ranked Kings of Eternity by Mr. Brown as my favorite book the year it published. The two books here, Xenopath and Cosmopath are books 2 and 3 respectively in his Bengal Station trilogy, a far future series featuring telepath Jeff Vaughn. I read and enjoyed the first, Necropath, and have been wanting to finish out the series for a while.

Arthur C. Clarke - I've only one of his novels, Songs of a Distant Earth. Clearly, I need to catch up with the late ACC of the Big Three.

Julie E. Czerneda - She's been on my radar for a while, since I was member of the Science Fiction Book Club years ago and I've intended to read her for a while. More recently, her guest post on Aidan's blog and my desire to read more SF by women pushed that even more. A Thousand Words for Stranger is her debut novel.

R.M. Meluch - Her Tour of the Merrimack space opera/military SF has been on my radar for a while, I'd received later books in this series for review and they intrigued me. Moreover, Jo Walton's and Liz Bourke's pieces on Tor.com convinced me (as do many of their pieces) I need to get a start on these books. The Myriad is the launch of the series.

Larry Niven - Another classic I've yet to read but have been meaning to for years, Ringworld. I read a couple of the later sequels he wrote with Edward M. Lerner (actually enjoyed the first in the sequence Fleet of Worlds quite a bit, but that enjoyment dwindled a lot with the next installment).

John Steakley - Armor is one of the definitive and foundational Military SF novels and yet another classic I've yet to read. The shop had two versions of the book, I went with the more classic/earlier cover.

Robert Charles Wilson- Like Brown, everything I've read by RCW (albeit, limited compared against his oeuvre) has been excellent. I consider Spin one of the best SF novels of the past decade. Blind Lake looks interesting and if past experience with RCW holds, I'll enjoy this one a great deal.